Greenland’s prime minister says the US will not get the island

COPENHAGEN - Greenland will decide its own future and the autonomous Danish territory will not become part of the United States, its new prime minister said on March 30, responding to US President Donald Trump’s latest comments about wanting the resource-rich island.

“President Trump says the United States ‘will get Greenland.’ Let me be clear: The United States will not get Greenland. We don’t belong to anyone else. We decide our own future,” Mr Jens-Frederik Nielsen said in a Facebook post.

“We’ll get Greenland. Yeah, 100 per cent”, Mr Trump said on March 30 in an interview with NBC News.

This latest exchange culminates a week of heightened tensions between the United States, Denmark, and Greenland, marked by Vice-President J.D. Vance’s visit to a US military base on the vast Arctic island.

Danish diplomacy on March 29

criticised Mr Vance’s “tone

”, after he said Denmark “has not done a good job by the people of Greenland”.

Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen

will be in Greenland

from April 2 to April 4 to “strengthen unity” between the kingdom and its Arctic territory.

Four of the five parties represented in the Greenlandic Parliament reached an agreement on March 28 to form a coalition government.

Greenland’s main parties all want independence, but they disagree on the roadmap. American pressure convinced them to form a coalition as quickly as possible with only the Naleraq party, which advocates rapid independence, declining to join. AFP